The concept of intellectual property has always been fluid in hip-hop, a genre built on the very idea of sampling, repurposing, and quoting other artists' work. But there is a distinct line between paying homage and biting. Drake, perhaps more than anyone else with a larger than life profile, at times seems to have a questionable grasp of the difference. Last year, he paid out $100,000 to Rappin' 4-Tay, whose 1994 song "Playaz Club" he seemed to have lifted from on YG's "Who Do You Love." And last month, he was accused of taking much of the aesthetic and design for his "Hotline Bling" video from the light installation work of James Turrell. Then there was the lingering controversy over his use of ghost writers in his mercifully finished beef with Meek Mill (admittedly different than outright stealing, but still).

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So maybe it shouldn't be much of a surprise that Drake, or at least whoever it is that manages his social media, wouldn't have a problem snatching another artist's work without credit. That's what appears to have happened to illustrator Dave Valeza Sunday, when a piece of his showed up on Drake's Instagram account, untagged, and with the artist's signature cropped out.

Valeza, a 31-year-old from Los Angeles who has published a handful of graphic novels, said he saw the post from Drake's account Sunday morning, and he was surprised to say the least. He posted about the lift Sunday night in a tweet that, as of this writing, has been retweeted almost 6,000 times.

"I wanted to elaborate on how this makes me feel, but the facts seen here seem enough for now," Valeza told me. "Spread the word!"

Of course, that pales in comparison to the over 400,000 likes on Drake's Instagram. Not to mention the countless other duplications that have since spread across the Internet in stories like this one on Vanity Fair interpreting the post as a confirmation of the Adele-remixes-Drake rumors that have been floating around.

Valeza says he first got the idea for the illustration in late October when Adele and Drake both released songs around the same time. "I was like, 'What if Drake and Adele are playing a long game of phone tag, and it's only exacerbating their assumptions of one another?'" Valeza said.

That's hundreds of thousands of views on Valeza's work without so much as a hat tip in his direction, something that for an artist trying to make a name for himself, coming from Drake, could be transformative.

Valeza is not without his advocates, however. Dozens of commenters on Drake's posting have been tagging the artist, imploring him to give credit, though so far, he hasn't. Naturally, mixed into the comments are the typical cretins who say—as we saw in The Fat Jewish ordeal—things like, "It's only an internet posts [sic], what's the big deal?"

The big deal, as Valeza put it, and as any artist will readily agree, is that it diminishes his ability to make a living. "Artists depend on visibility," he explained in an email. "Artworks posted without credit hurts that."

He's not asking for anything else than acknowledgment, he says. "Just credit. There's no hard feelings, I just want credit."